I had a program on my Amiga that played random notes while typing 
Finishing up the hardware
- Thread starter EvilDragon
- Start date
Kev2442
Still French
Seriously ? I know I come from Win7 and all, but damn...
I don't expect any Windows computer to be of any use below 4GB. Is Linux this light ?
How could it be both lighter on memory (HDD and RAM) and on CPU as well ? That's beyond belief...
Silent-Hunter
Hardcore Member
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 3,485
It's because programs are simpler, I think. Many MS-DOS programs used less than 100K of RAM, there's no reason modern programs should need as much as they do on Windows.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2010
- Messages
- 11,409
At idle my linux desktop is using only 200mb or so and that isn't really that light of a distribution. On the devboard with really heavy multitasking I still couldn't push it over 750MB. Windows os much more bloated, things running in the background and such.
Last edited by a moderator:
Caine
Hardcore Member
Linux itself should run on about 2 MB of RAM (maybe even less). However the choice of programs you run on top of that can greatly increase the requirements.There have been plenty of Android phones with about 2GB of RAM (Android is a fairly heavy-weight flavour of Linux).
Naturally, the selection of ported software will adapt to cater to what memory is available. The more programs you run in parallel, the more RAM you will
require. That said, the Pandora was running on 256 MB of RAM and was perfectly usuable.
Coded better, less bloat, probably more dynamic linking, a more modular approach, and because everything can be recompiled specifically for the platform (in particular, the kernel), everything can be better tuned to the specific device. In the Windows world, everything is binary-only, and those binaries have to work on a large variety of hardware, so probably a large percentage of your Windows install consists of stuff that never gets executed.
Kev2442
Still French
I understand that, and I saw that mem usage by myself when I gave Linux a try some months ago (gave up because of lack of experience, not enough time to learn and mostly because of unsupported hardware). But we can't put it all on the quality of code.
And if there's many unused DLLs and all explaining the size part, then where goes the RAM on idle ? That's pretty much the same thing I'm wondering about with Chrome (memory hog for sure). I can see that Aero and other high-end Windows functions can slow down a computer, but this shouldn't be the major cause.
I'm still wondering how Linux manages to be this light / Windows comes to be this heavy.
And if there's many unused DLLs and all explaining the size part, then where goes the RAM on idle ? That's pretty much the same thing I'm wondering about with Chrome (memory hog for sure). I can see that Aero and other high-end Windows functions can slow down a computer, but this shouldn't be the major cause.
I'm still wondering how Linux manages to be this light / Windows comes to be this heavy.
Caine
Hardcore Member
Supply and demand. Windows runs primarily on x86 hardware where RAM is easily and cheaply accessible.It is more costly to optimize the OS and applications than for people to buy more memory.
Linux is big in the embedded market where minimizing the cost of the devices is a major goal.
Therefore making the OS lightweight has traditionally been of great importance.
Last edited by a moderator:
Ivididiviividi
Still Fresh
Thats just how i use Firefox, and it works for me.What for? If it's just for testing purposes then even if PYRA were to have a gazillion GB of ram, it's still not enough as you always have ways to max out the ram by opening a +2600 gazillion tabs total, and +400 gazillion pages active
The only feedback I need is the visual feedback.
Recommended memory for the kernel alone is 8MB, but people did into 640k
Last edited by a moderator:
milkshake
Advanced Member
Windows OS will take as much free ram as possible and when u need it, it will relinquish it and let u have it, it's better for your RAM to actually be in use than it is not in use.
WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 16,731
Android's architecture is designed to keep as many apps in memory, suspended, as possible. This is a design feature and if you need more RAM than is currently available the system will kill off an application to free more up. This makes it difficult to know how much RAM can actually be made available for your application, unfortunately, leading to people assuming Android *requires* large amounts of RAM. It doesn't, it can make due on very little RAM, it just keeps fewer applications suspended at once.
Linux and Mac do the same. As far as I recall, Windows is actually fairly late to the game with doing this cacheing. That's not what anyone is talking about though, that stuff doesn't appear as "used", as far as the system is concerned that is free even if its in use.The legitimate complaints are that Windows doesn't just consume more RAM, it actually requires more RAM, a similar system being able to do less at one time in the same amount of RAM on Windows as it does on Linux. I don't have an answer as to why.
I suspect that in Windows, a non-negligible amount of RAM is used by known and unknown, intended or unintended backdoors, spyware, malware, viruses, anti-viruses, anti-anti-viruses, and so on.
levi
Still fresh, damnit!
Other mysteries include; why does windows take so damn long to do any updates?
Kev2442
Still French
I heard that Windows devs are not able to view anything but their own code, so they can't check the other devs' code. That would explain the great lack of optimization, as well as the inability to find security leaks, and thus patch them.
Ivididiviividi
Still Fresh
nanostallman
notaz
Certified Guru
I wouldn't call the 512MB minimum "very little", in my view it's still wasting huge amounts for nothing.
slaeshjag
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
512 MB is more of a usability minimum. Sadly I have an Android device. 512 MB of RAM. As long as I single-task (when I'm done with an application, open the window manager and nuke all windows), it works relatively well.
My Android phone has 1GB of RAM and even that does not seem to be enough to do multitasking: switching between the browser and a game for example, is likely to get the other thing killed. This is very annoying. Randomly killing stuff when stupid poorly coded apps request too much memory, I don't really like that principle.
My Pandora with 512MB of RAM is much, much better at multitasking than my Android phone with 1GB of RAM. Both are technically Linux-based, but I think Android illustrates how even a good base can always still be screwed up by the layers above.
My Pandora with 512MB of RAM is much, much better at multitasking than my Android phone with 1GB of RAM. Both are technically Linux-based, but I think Android illustrates how even a good base can always still be screwed up by the layers above.
Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
To be fair, phones are suited to be a bunch of tasks Pandoras aren't. At the very least they've got to be ready to receive calls and start taking pictures. And if your phone's significantly higher resolution than your Pandora that's going to have a memory cost too. I doubt these things account for all of the higher footprint but surely some of it.
